G is for Gratitude

Are you grateful? Usually people only think once a year what they are “thankful” for, but do you remind yourself to think of the things you are grateful for? I know that I don’t think of it everyday. There are a lot of things that I should be grateful for each day because I know it would be harder if I did not have them. Such as waking up each morning, waking up next to Hubsy to be each morning, food to eat, all my limbs and my health, the love of a large and supportive family, strong ties to my siblings, beginning to make ties with my new family, the list could go on and on. It just is not a list that I think of each day. I should. So why do so many of us take the most basic things for granted each day?

Gratitude is sometimes the most overlooked sentiment in our society I believe. With everything at our fingertips these days, it is easy to forget how simple things are because of our technology. We forget to have gratitude for the basic requirements for survival, because we have them, it is expected. It is easy to overlook something, or even someone, that is always there and is expected to be. Not because it is a must, but because it or they have been. Yet have we stopped to think what it would be like if they were not there? Makes life a bit more bleak doesn’t it? Now imagine all those people living across the world who do not have the same things that we do, water, food. Two basic requirements for life, completely unavailable to others, while we toss out a ton of food, or over eat. I am willing to bet that if we were to cut back on the mass production of food for the fast food market, and ate only what we needed, we could feed the world. That is another topic completely, for another day.

So many people have life so much harder, more painful than any of us could imagine. Yet, because we are not faced with the same difficulties as others, we begin to take what we have for granted because we have always had it. We worry about our bodies, not being perfect, when we should be happy to have a fully functional and healthy body. We complain about not having the newest gadget, when we should remember that it is a luxury to have one in the first place. Life gets comfortable, we get complacent with the way things are, but once that comfort is shaken we feel as though it is the end of the world. It isn’t, not yet anyway.

“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.” J.F.K.